Letters in the New York Times are becoming increasing nutty:
What a shame that the words and concepts of nationalization and socialism are anathemas in the American vocabulary. It’s too bad, because they often work quite well.
In reality, large swaths of the American economy are nationalized. For the most part, it works.
Health care for the elderly is in the national domain with Medicare.
Retirement and disability pensions are nationalized with Social Security.
Military and veterans’ hospitals and outpatient care are part of a vast and mostly successful nationalized industry.
I could go on. Why don’t we just face it? Sometimes it’s called for and helps enormously.
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Seriously, why is Nazism such a dirty word these days?
Kalim Kassam,
Americans will never go for something called Nazism. We fought a war against that ideology. However if you repackage the same platform and call it Republican or Democrat, the people will accept it. In America it is all about marketing and Nazism has too much baggage. The fact that socialism of any type is detrimental to society is a concept unintelligible to the people, not because they can not understand the logic behind this conclusion, but because they can not be bothered to think about the great struggles in life when confronted by the countless minutiae of daily life. The soundbites proffered by TV personalities extolling the virtues of nationalization are never examined critically. The overall bias towards statism is subliminally augmented over time, gradually eliminating all thought contrary to the goals of the socialists. Call it a conspiracy, or call it laziness. It works.
I think I’m gonna yak…
Not even kidding.
I feel like I fell asleep a few years ago and this is some nightmare that just won’t stop…
And if Nazism is just not popular for whatever reason, what’s wrong with just saying National Socialism? Anyway, I still prefer calling it all Communism, but that’s just me.
Was this from one of Krugman’s uh, “award winning” op-eds, or mal-informed readers/fans/students?
If you called it Americanism, people would go for it! Or American socialism, Amsoc, or Amsies. Or Amzi.
The NYT letter was tongue in cheek, right?
There are scarce better examples of government failure than those given?!
It absolutely was not tongue in cheek. It was un- or mis- educated and unwilling to take responsibility for ones actions. Definitely “can’t everybody just get along” and “everyone can just take the piece they need from the common pie”, without realizing that years of this have left us with no pie, and worse, an obligation to pay lots of pies to other people.
Anyway – those people are straight up serious. Just dangerously misinformed and misguided.
Sad as what is happening in the states might sound for all of us free market capitalists- even in my tiny country of New Zealand we are also quickly heading towards the same path of american policies of bigger government more socialism and constantly increasing govt intervention in all aspects of our lives, and now our debates are only including the biggest 2 parties! first time this has happened that i can remember!!!! we might all have different cultures but freedom is the same all around the world
It’s simply taboo (like Voldemort). It’s the same with the conservatives saying “laissez faire”. You should hear Limbaugh, whenever he says “free market” he almost immediately says “not laissez faire”.
I can’t believe this guy cited the military and veterans health care as socialized successes. He’s obviously never used them.
it is what it is, the rise of the fourth reich
Americans will never go for something called Nazism. We fought a war against that ideology. However if you repackage the same platform and call it Republican or Democrat, the people will accept it.
What do you mean “if”?
If you called it Americanism, people would go for it! Or American socialism, Amsoc, or Amsies. Or Amzi.
Once upon a time, it was openly called “the American System.” This term was favored by Alexander “National Bank” Hamilton. And Abraham “Protectionism and Consolidation” Lincoln.
(Maybe we could go with Amerazi?)
The author of the letter is niave and misinformed, but I will give credit for honesty: our government is indeed socialist.
Politicians never call things by their right names; it’s how they function (and one of the many reasons I distrust them so deeply). If you subject a person to near-drowning in order to make him say certain things, that’s not torture; it’s “enhanced interrogation”. If the government is making healthcare decisions, that’s not government-run healthcare; that’s a “single-payer healthcare system”. And so on.
If politicians called things by their right names, even the most dull-witted of the citizenry would reject them. So the evil is done under the cover of euphemism.
Stanley Pinchak said, “The fact that socialism of any type is detrimental to society is a concept unintelligible to the people, not because they can not understand the logic behind this conclusion, but because they can not be bothered to think about the great struggles in life when confronted by the countless minutiae of daily life.”
I agree wholeheartedly as I am constantly discussing these recent developments with my friends and family members, the far majority of which are college educated, and none of them have any idea what is actually going on, being too busy with their jobs, their families, and just making ends meet. It practically takes hours of daily online reading and research on sites such as this for me to stay on top of it all, too, time that most others either do not have or choose not to devote to just staying informed of current events.
nicholas Gray said, “If you called it Americanism, people would go for it! Or American socialism, Amsoc, or Amsies. Or Amzi.”
“Amzi” … that’s brilliant! Or the Treasury Department could just seize the trademark for “Amway” (temporarily, of course) and coopt it for “our new American way of life.”
Why such hostility? While it can be proven through numerous examples that pure socialism/communism/nationalism, whatever you’re choosing to call a government run system, doesn’t work, neither does free market capitalism. Neither works, so the conclusion must be that there is a balance between the two. Uncheck market capitalism will result in blatant exploitation of a sizeable percentage of a nation’s population, conversely socialism will exploit everyone not in the politboro. A balance must be found, we must be willing to accept a small measure of nationalism (whatever you want to call it) to ensure a stable economy. May I point out also, that while the NAZI government did terrible things, their nationalism DID result in a very strong economy… (Until we beat them back to Berlin for Hitler to commit suicide.)
Augusto, if you’re going to post on this site I suggest you familiarize yourself with Mises’s arguments rather than spouting ignorant proclamations from high. The only “conclusion” to be drawn is that hampered market economies can be exploitative. Well how insightful. And as for Hitler, I’d look up works on this site refuting this nonsense that his war efforts somehow were responsible for a sound economy, as opposed to pretty figures.
As Robert Higgs and Hans Hoppe have pointed out, we are indoctrinated with State propaganda from birth up until death. Thus it’s almost impossible for the average American to conceive of a life without the State or one with completely free markets. The State always rewrites history to claim it is the savior and without it life would be miserable and unbearable. Of course, Nock’s Remnant knows this is false; we know that it is the State that provokes these crises and then claims its interventions are necessary.
But it is an uphill battle because people cannot defend what they have never experienced. As Etienne de la Boetie points out, if people believe that such robbery and oppression is natural because that’s all they know, they have no reason to resist said robbery and oppression.
The arguments for or against nationalism and free markets makes for great discussion. But that’s it. The fact is that human beings are imperfect. At best we can continue our search for the political and economic theories of everything, however I seriously doubt we will ever find it. In fact, we shouldn’t find it. Because it is the search which creates the balancing act and which fosters stability over the long term. And that is what will keep us moving forward. It’s about the search. Beware anyone who preaches one dominant process over all others. For it is that person that has shut out the rest of the world. And like a wolverine defending its kill, it is that person whom is the most dangerous.
Yeah, which is why we want freedom to actually choose how to organize ourselves, whether one is a voluntaryist capitalist, socialist, whatever, and not states imposing a single model on all of society.
Or in other words, we need to be free to search, instead of allowing some people to force their system on the rest of us, be it their system of health care, education, foreign policy, money and economy, welfare, etc.
neither does free market capitalism. Neither works, so the conclusion must be that there is a balance between the two.
Beware anyone who preaches one dominant process over all others. For it is that person that has shut out the rest of the world. And like a wolverine defending its kill
What’s with all the empty platitudes today? Take a look around you. Open your mind, Yoda. Read this: http://mises.org/midroad.asp
Half the time when I ask people to consider the benefits of economic liberty, they say that it doesn’t work. The other half of the time they say it’s never existed anywhere in human history. Both can’t be true.
The burden of persuasion is on people who advocate for the infringement of economic liberty, and want to demonstrate that a 100% voluntary economy is somehow harmful and inherently exploitative. Facile cliches touting this middle-way-everything-in-a-balance garbage just don’t cut it.
Moreover, I convey to you that we are no longer “indoctrinated with State propaganda from birth up until death.†Rather we are indoctrinated with corporate propaganda from birth up until death; which has ushered in a new era of Corporatism. And that it has replaced Statism as a means to control the population and direct national affairs. Thus, giving birth to several generations which view the world through the eyes of the product lifecycle, and therefore have never understood what Statism is. The psychological foundations of these generations is driven by launch cycles and “version warfare†which has almost completely replaced the wealth indicator as a means of identifying ones place in society.
manugs, you are in wolverine mode. You are correct in that both can’t be true. It’s doesn’t work would be an assumption. But it is true that it has never existed.
The simple fact is that we have not been in existence long enough to fight until death for any one particular model. And it would be foolish for us to do so. For it may be that a 100% voluntary economy works great for a thousand years and then falls apart due to unforeseen variables based on human evolution (if one believes in that) which render it obsolete. Even Mises said “Every action is a speculation, i.e., guided by a definite opinion concerning the uncertain conditions of the future.”
Bottom line, it’s all just speculation. It is not about middle of the road, but about balance. Middle of the road implies a finite way of thinking (one can take the middle of the road forever). Balance does not. It consists of twists, turns, ups and downs. It means accepting that certain problems call for specific solutions during various times.
I would like to point out that Germany, thoughout the 20s and 30s had a much lower average wage than Britain or France and rather than being very strong was on the edge of financial disaster all the years the Nazis were in power according to Adam Towse in his book Wages of Destruction which doesn’t credit von Mises but at least credits Heyek.
Absolutely, and could very well be an indication of how forcing one ideal onto a population will have negative results, regardless of whether it is Socialism, Nazism or 100% free market principles.
John,
“Forcing” free market principles on a population is impossible. Free markets result when people _stop_ forcing their systems onto others. How would you force something that is defined as being the absence of aggressive force?
“Beware anyone who preaches one dominant process over all others. For it is that person that has shut out the rest of the world. And like a wolverine defending its kill, it is that person whom is the most dangerous.”
Some commenters seem enamored with this middle ground between free markets and socialism, as if there exists a middle ground between liberty and slavery. Such thinking completely misunderstands the nature of the State. As many of us who read Mises.org regularly know, the State is a criminal gang writ large. The foundation of its power is fear and every action it takes is enforced through violence or the threat of violence. The desire of States to oppress, rob, and murder is insatiable. We who compose Albert Nock’s Remnant understand this. We are unwilling to yield to the middle ground because we know it leads to socialism and oppression. The compromises and negotiations of liberal democracy are simply speed bumps on the Road to Serfdom.
As David Hume, Albert Nock, and Etienne de la Boetie have all pointed out, all State power rests on consent. Such consent does not have to be enthusiastic support, only fateful resignation. Force will never free people from their own mental prisons of State propaganda; people must choose to be free. The “dominant process†we preach is one that requires people to voluntarily withdraw consent from the State.
manugs, you are in wolverine mode. … The simple fact is that we have not been in existence long enough to fight until death for any one particular model.
You are fighting for your model. You pretend that you are open-minded, but you are not. You have an ideology, obviously, but you like to wrap it in the pretense of moderation and equanimity.
I don’t know why people hide behind this kind of pseudo-intellectual yin-yang neo-zoroastrian karmic balance fantasy. It’s self-indulgent and childish. It’s a phony claim to moral superiority by being somehow above the fray.
You have made your choice. You choose to support the organized crime of the State, on some level that you are comfortable with. But you won’t even admit to yourself or us that you have made this choice. That attitude is a product of either cowardice or opportunism.
magnus: 1
John: 0 (and a big zero, too)
John Brock,
I think you are confusing something very important here. The “free market” is not some thing defined in the sense that a “chair” is. You cannot observe it, it’s not something tangible to hold in your palm, or something you see on TV. It is nothing more and nothing less than the sum of voluntary human relations, cooperating with each other and trading – products, services, ideas, etc.
In this world, there are only two modes of interaction: (a) voluntary, or (b) coercive.
The state by definition is coercive. When we talk about “nationalism,” or “socialism” or “fascism” or “Nazism” I think we need to be clearer. The difference in all these things may involve substantive things such as a difference in doctrine here, or a doctrine there, but in the end, all political systems, to the degree that they involve coercion – forcibly taking wealth from others and redistributing it; intervening in the voluntary associations of humans and imposing government fiat, etc. – are socialistic.
While we have a system that is not outright socialism, to the extent that it is based on violence, intervention, taxation, wealth redistribution – it is socialistic. The purpose is not to strike a balance because as others have pointed out, this is a slippery slope that only leads to worse things. More government and more intervention only begets more government and more intervention.
Those of us that favor the free market over coercive modes of interaction obviously do so because it is based on a sound logical and philosophical premises. You either favor the voluntary associations of humans, or the coercive modes. And lest we forget, it is the latter, that when left unchecked, has resulted in some of the most horrific genocides and wars in the 20th century, and it is that system which you are here promoting.
If you are going to make blanket assertions for the sake of making blanket assertions without having any idea of the philosophy behind this website, and you are not interested in a discussion, except for a socialistic spiel, you may as well save your time as no one is really interested in what you have to say and it’s nothing anyone here has not seen among 95% of the masses.
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